Theatre
369-0-20: Latin American Theatre : Latin Amer & US Latina/o Performance:Staging Hist

Instructor: Ana E Puga
Office address: Department Of Theatre Room 205 1949 Campus Dr Evanston, Il 60208
Phone: 847.491.3143
E-mail: apuga@northwestern.edu
Office Hours:

Expected Enrollment: 15

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This class focuses on how playwrights from Mexico, Cuba, and the United States grapple with Latin American and US Latina/o history. We start from the premise that exploring character psychology is important, but gives us only partial understand of a theatrical work. To more completely appreciate and richly stage a play we must understand its artistic strategies as part of the historical and political conditions to which it responds. To put it simply: What world does this play come from and how does it try to change that world? If staged here and now, how might it change our world?

We will read works by the Mexican playwrights Sabina Berman, Carlos Fuentes, Javier Malpica, and Hugo Salcedo; by the Mexican-American Luis Valdez; and by the Cuban-Americans Nilo Cruz, Maria Irene Fornes, Eduardo Machado, and Dolores Prida.

The plays are divided into five units focused on different historical/political phenomena: the Mexican Revolution and the legend of Pancho Villa, the migration of Mexican divas to Hollywood, the post-1985 migration of Mexicans to the United States, the Cuban Revolution and the rule of Fidel Castro, and the post-1959 exile of Cubans to the United States. Students will independently research, with the professor’s guidance, at least two of these elements, in order to inform their analyses of the plays. Assignments are intended to challenge students to imagine how their historically informed reading would be applied in a real-world setting, as actors, designers, directors, or dramaturges involved in the staging of a theatrical work. Previous theatrical experience is not required.

[Course Descriptions for Spring 2009] [School of Communication] [THEATRE Theatre]